The Billionaire's Allure (The Silver Cross Club Book 5) (17 page)

“Hey now,” Renzo said, settling his hand on the boy’s head. “
Esta bien.
Oscar, this is my old friend Bee. Can you say hello?”

“Hello,” the boy mumbled. Still clutching at Renzo’s leg, he said, “Mama said to see if your friends want to stay for lunch.”

Renzo cocked an eyebrow at me. “What do you say?”

“I shouldn’t,” I said reluctantly. “Max is waiting for me.”

Renzo looked away. The elephant in the room: whatever had caused the rift between him and Max. I had prepared myself for Renzo refusing to see either of us, but I hadn’t anticipated that Renzo would be delighted to see me but unwilling even to have Max inside his house.

I spun my coffee mug on the table. “Dare I ask?”

“Don’t ask,” he said. “It isn’t my place to tell you,” which raised far more questions than it answered. He looked down at Oscar and ruffled the boy’s hair. “Why don’t we go outside and show Bee your new bike?”

“Okay,” Oscar said, looking like he wasn’t totally convinced.

“Go tell your mom what we’re doing,” Renzo said, and Oscar scampered off.

“I hope you’ll speak with Max,” I said, once he was gone. “I know he’s missed you as much as I have.”

“I’ll speak with him,” Renzo said grimly. “You don’t need to worry about that.”

We went outside, Oscar clinging to Renzo’s hand. Max was sitting in the car, but he clambered out of the driver’s seat when he saw us coming down the walk, and leaned against the car, arms folded on top of the roof.

“My bike is in the back yard,” Oscar said, tugging at Renzo’s hand and pointing toward the back of the driveway.

“I know it is,” Renzo said. “Why don’t you show Beth how you can balance on your own? I need to have a word with this fellow.”

Oscar stared up at me, eyes narrowed like he was taking my measure. “Okay,” he said, releasing Renzo’s hand, and turned to me with his arm upraised.

Taking orders from a five-year-old. I obediently clasped his hand in mine, and he smiled at me. I had passed muster, then.

“Let’s go look,” Oscar said, leaning toward the back yard, trying to drag me with him.

“Renzo,” I said, helpless, wishing I could prevent the confrontation that I knew was about to happen. “Max.”

“We’ll be fine,” Renzo said, staring intently at Max. “You go ahead.”

There was no helping it. I went.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Max

Renzo looked like he wanted to beat me into a pulp, and I didn’t blame him. He had the decency to wait until Beth and the little boy—Renzo’s son? Nephew? Younger brother?—were out of sight in the back yard. Then he turned to me with such black rage in his eyes that I was convinced he was going to hit me, and I tensed my muscles in preparation for the blow.

“I’m not going to hit you,” he said. “But I really want to.”

“Why don’t you, then?” I asked. “I’ll take the hit. I won’t even fight back.”

“That won’t suffice to make amends,” he said. “And I’m trying to stay out of prison. So there won’t be any hitting.” He flexed his fists, clearly still fighting the urge to punch me in the face.

“Renzo, I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s all I can say. I was a stupid kid. I didn’t know anything about life.”

“No,” he said. “And you still don’t. I want you staying away from Bee.”

So that was it. He hadn’t emerged from the house to mend fences. He’d come out here to threaten me. “I’m not going to do that. Maybe you won’t forgive me, but she has.”

Renzo looked back over his shoulder. Beth and the boy were still out of sight, but he turned to me and said, “Let’s take a walk down the block.”

We walked in silence, side by side, until we reached what was evidently a safe distance from the house. Then Renzo stopped and rocked back on his heels, hands in his pockets. “I never gave her your letter.”

I had the feeling of going down a staircase in the dark and reaching the bottom without realizing it, or sitting down in a chair that was lower than expected: an abrupt, unexpected jolt, and the proverbial rug yanked out from beneath me.

If Beth had never read that letter…

“She doesn’t know,” Renzo said, answering my unspoken thoughts. “I never gave it to her.”

“
Fuck
,” I said, and turned away.

The thing I regretted most about my misbegotten adolescence—more than running away from home in the first place, more than terrifying my parents—was lying to Beth and Renzo about who I was. The letter had been my attempt to explain, and to absolve myself.

And Renzo never gave it to Beth. No wonder she hadn’t gotten in touch with me.

“Why did you do it?” I asked him.

“I read it,” he said. “I was suspicious. Your story didn’t add up. You were too smart about some things, and too clueless about others. So I read the letter. And when I learned that you had lied to us, I decided that Bee should never know. It would have broken her heart.”

“I thought she knew,” I said. Oh, Jesus. My stomach churned. This changed everything. I had, without meaning to, renewed my relationship with her under false pretenses. “I have to tell her.”

“Don’t,” Renzo said.

I stared at him. “Excuse me?”

“Don’t tell her. At least not yet. It isn’t the right time.” He rubbed one hand over his face. “She’ll be mad at both of us. And I—I’ve just found her again. I don’t want her to disappear.”

“You selfish fuck,” I said, incredulous. “If you had just given her the letter in the first place—”

“But I didn’t, and you’re not going to.”

“Or what?” I snapped. “How are you going to stop me?”

“She’ll be mad at you, too,” he said. “And you don’t want to lose her either, do you? I saw the way you looked at her. You’re still in love with her. If you tell her now, she’ll run.”

“If I
don’t
tell her now, she’ll find out eventually, and she’ll never forgive me,” I said. “The original lie was bad enough. Compounding it now with a lie of omission—”

“But she doesn’t know that you know that she doesn’t know,” Renzo said, which took me a moment to untangle. “You tried to tell her. And I fucked up and hid it from her.” He shrugged. “Don’t tell her yet.”

“What a God-awful idea,” I said. “If not now, when? The longer it goes—”

“That’s not
my
problem,” Renzo said. “If she hates you forever—so what? It’s no skin off my back.”

“You’re a coward,” I said. He didn’t look triumphant. He looked tired, and older than he was. “You love her, don’t you?”

He looked over his shoulder toward the house. Head turned away from me, he said, “Yes.” Then he looked at me once more, so much sorrow and buried longing in his eyes that my rage ebbed immediately. This man deserved my pity, not my anger. “But she never thought of me like that, not with you around. I always knew I didn’t have a chance.”

I blew out a lungful of air. “Fine. I won’t tell her right away. I’ll give you a little bit of time. But not a lot. If you don’t tell her soon, I’m going to tell her myself. She deserves to know the truth. From both of us.”

“I understand,” he said. “I’m going to send her the letter.”

“For the record, I think this is a terrible idea,” I said, “and it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. But I’m here because I wanted to apologize to you and try to make amends, and if this is what you want, I’ll go along with it. At least for a little while.”

He grunted his agreement. A handshake was too much to hope for, I supposed.

We walked back to the house. After a few moments of silence, Renzo grinned and said, “You know, I was really looking forward to blackmailing you.”

“Am I less of a dishonest creep than you anticipated?” I asked. “My apologies.”

“Integrity is expensive,” he said. “Especially when you’re in prison.”

It was a tacit apology, and I took it as such. I couldn’t hate Renzo. I couldn’t even be angry with him. His life was a sad ruin, and—I was sure—a daily reminder to him of what he could have done, could have been, had things turned out a little differently.

Maybe I would send his wife a large, anonymous check.

Beth was in the front yard with the little boy, holding the handlebars of his bike and encouraging him to balance. Renzo and I stopped at the end of the driveway and watched her. I couldn’t say what was going through Renzo’s mind, but I suspected his thoughts were similar to my own. Beth had originally, and very understandably, been cold and distant with me when I first appeared at her club. Only yesterday had the ice thawed and the old Beth, the Bee I had known, reappeared. She was bright, warm, maternal. Watching her with Renzo’s son brought forth a sharp yearning in my chest. I wanted to start a family with her. I wanted her to laugh in the front yard with our own children.

If she ever forgave me.

Christ. How was I going to tell her?

Her laughter stopped when she noticed us watching. “Is everything okay?”

“Fine,” Renzo said.

“Uncle Renzo, look what I can do!” the boy said.

I raised an eyebrow. “Uncle?”

“My sister’s kid,” Renzo said. “I’m living with them for now.”

I quickly rewrote my mental narrative. Sister, not wife. “I’m glad to hear that.”

He grunted in response.

Beth helped the boy down from his bike and approached us with a look on her face like she still thought punches might fly. Renzo smiled at her, and I fought back a surge of jealousy. Renzo had been, at one time, as close as a brother. I had hoped, probably foolishly, that we might become close again. I knew now that there was no chance of that happening, but it still pained me to see him respond to Beth so warmly when he didn’t even want me in his house.

“Stay for lunch,” Renzo said, and then, with a glance in my direction, “Not you.”

“I’m not going to leave him sitting in the car while I eat with you,” Beth said.

Her loyalty was like a blade through my heart. “I don’t mind,” I said. I would be the bigger man. “This is why we flew out here. Take as much time as you want.”

She protested a few more times, but we wore her down, and she followed Renzo and the boy back into the house, glancing back at me over her shoulder with her eyebrows furrowed.

I wondered what Renzo was going to tell her.

I sat in the car and checked my email on my phone, hoping for an urgent crisis of some sort that would take all of my attention. There were none. I was alone with my thoughts, and they were black, black.

Everything I had done since reuniting with Beth, every word, every touch, was predicated on the idea that she knew my true identity and knew that I had lied to her. I thought we had dealt with the past; I thought she had forgiven me. But instead, I was back where I had started, a beleaguered supplicant with my heart in my hands.

I wondered what she thought about my unexplained disappearance. Did she really believe that I would have abandoned her like that, without a word? I understood, now, why she had told me that she thought I was dead. In her position, I probably would have thought the same.

Ah, fuck. What was I going to do?

Wait for Renzo. Hope he didn’t take too long. Tell Beth myself if he dragged his feet for more than a week or two.

And in the meantime—what? Carry on with Beth like nothing had happened? It wasn’t right. It was a slimy, underhanded thing to do. But if I changed my behavior, she would get suspicious, and I had promised Renzo I would give him the time he needed.

I didn’t have a choice. I would have to act like nothing had changed.

By the time Beth finally reemerged from the house, I was in a state of total emotional agony. I couldn’t set things right with her without breaking my word to Renzo; all I could do was wait and see, and hope she didn’t hate me too much after the truth finally came out.

I watched as Renzo walked her to the curb and drew her into an embrace. She pressed her face against his chest, and he held her tightly, his arms wrapped around her. He said something, and her shoulders shook—with laughter, or maybe with tears. And then he kissed the top of her head and released her, and she turned away from him and opened the door of the car.

“Everything okay?” I asked her.

“Yeah,” she said. “Let’s go.”

She buckled her seatbelt, and I started the engine. Renzo stood on the sidewalk, watching us, impassive. Beth lifted one hand in farewell. After a moment, Renzo raised his own hand.

I pulled away from the curb.

Beth was silent in the passenger seat beside me as I turned left at the corner and headed back toward the freeway and San Francisco. As I merged again onto the main road, with the car dealerships and the gas stations, she said, “I don’t know if I’ll ever see him again.”

“What makes you say that?” I asked, dull panic gripping at my chest. Had Renzo said something to her that made her think—

“I don’t know,” she said. “Just a feeling. He seemed like he was saying goodbye. I think he’s still—I don’t know. He’s had a hard life. I think he wants us to stay in the past, you know? It seems like he’s sort of glorified the time we spent together, like it was the best time of his life. And it’s hard to idolize real people. He wants us to stay distant, and perfect.”